[conspire] Oscarsborg

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> At CABAL. the local Viking told about the start of WWII in Norway. 
> Below is a link to a video about the outdated fort that sunk the
> German flagship leading the invasion.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAWwW_wdXAg

Thank you; that is a _very_ good account of the Battle of Drøbak Sound,
and its later ramifications.  Even before I saw what a thorough and
lucid account he was telling, I was enjoying Calum's lowland Scottish
accent.  His German and Norwegian are both execrable, which of course
just proves that, yes, he's British.  ;->

I also see that, like me, he's a fan of the Norwegian 2016 bio-pic "The
King's Choice" (titled in the original Norwegian "Kongens nei", meaning
"The King's 'No'"), which among other things meticulously re-creates the
battle.  Ironies abound, including that 64-year old Oberst (Colonel)
Birger Eriksen, commander of Oscarsborg Fortress, on two small islands
20 km south of Oslo harbour, with a rather threadbare crew of
just-delivered young trainees, made the critical judgement call to fire
on the approaching unknown war flotilla, even though he had no idea if
it was the German Kreigsmarine, the UK Royal Navy, or the Maritime
National (France) steaming north towards neutral Norway's capital.  

Eriksen figured, no matter who was attacking, it was already an act of
war, and he knew the flotilla had already been fired upon by more-modern
Norwegian installations further south down the fjord, so, as Calum says,
Eriksen figure warning shots were superfluous.

Eriksen said:  "Either I will be court-martialed , or I will become a
war-hero.  Fire."  (Standing orders required warning shots.)

The next irony was that his main and first weapon to turn on the lead
ship, the brand-new, huge, heavily armed armoured cruiser SMS Blücher,
the flagship of the entire invasion, bearing about 2,200 critically
needed occupation troops, was a pair of _German_ Krupp 28 cm (11") MRK
L/35 naval guns ("Aron" and "Moses"), that Sweden/Norway bought for
Oscarborg in _1895_.

Eriksen actually had three of those Krupp 19th C. guns, but not enough
young trainees to operate more than two, and correctly figured he
couldn't fire very many salvos with untrained troops, so every shot had
to count.  And they did, opening fire at 4:17am using a firing crew that
included the fortress's civilian cooks.  Blücher was heavily hit and in
trouble right away -- and then was also hit by accurate fire from
coastal forts on each side of the fjord, was disabled, and started to
list to port.

Only at this point, about 4:25am, could personnel on Oscarborg figure
out _who_ the invaders were, as sailors aboard the stricken Blücher
started singing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".

At this point, the final irony:  Eriksen had one other veteran officer
to rely on, retired Kommandørkaptein (Commander Senior Grade) Andreas
Anderssen, age 61 and former commander of Oscarborg Fortress, present
temporarily to fill in for one of the gun battery commanders, who was
home ill.  Eriksen had sent Anderssen down to the island's coast to
Oscarborg's last-resort weapon, a torpedo-firing station equipped with
nine _Austro-Hungarian_ "Whitehead" torpedoes, bought around year 1900,
that could be fired in pairs from three torpedo tunnels.  Anderssen
fired two torpedoes at 4:30am; both were direct hits, the second
finishing Blücher.  

The 1866 "Whitehead" design, by the way, was, actually, the first-ever 
torpedo design of any kind, and Battle of Drøbak Sound was its last use
in war operations -- being that obsolete.  Its first war use had been in
1878, to sink an Ottoman ship.

The Oslo invasion's cutting-edge flagship went down, with many hundreds
of deaths, after an hour's struggle by fire crews do save it.  1,400
survivors were taken into custody.  Meanwhile, the rest of the flotilla
retreated, with coastal batteries badly damaging the heavy cruiser
Lützow, and firing becoming easier now that the sun was rising.

The invasion _did_ resume after a day's delay, but that delay itself was
also crucial, as the Cabinet, parliament, royal family, and national
gold reserves were evacuated by train north from Oslo as Norway
continued to fight, which in turn gave the parliament time to meet in
Elverum, Innlandet county, and authorise the Cabinet to retain and
exercise full government powers from any location (the "Elverum
Authorisation") until it could meet again -- with the result that Norway
was the only invaded country that never surrendered, and continued to
wage war against the occupiers, resuming operation from London (with
parliamentary legitimacy) after retreating to Molde on the Norwegian
west coast.  

Which, among other things, meant that puppet governments attempted by
Berlin (first Vidkun Quisling's, having tried to seize power for his
far-right and very minor[1] party Nasjonal Samling, lit. "National
Gathering", when he heard the government had evacuated from Oslo, and
then a direct military regime run by Reichskommissariat Norwegen Josef
Terboven), were utterly rejected by the stubborn Norwegians, who caused
the occupiers no end of trouble.

Anyway, the flick I mention vividly depicts the Battle of Drøbak Sound.
In fact, I recognise some of Calum's footage as being _from_ the film,
in the scene depicting the firing of those two 19th C. Krupp guns.

Eriksen retired in Nov. 1940 (under occupation), a few months later,
and served as a minor city official, representing the Conservative
Party.  After the war, at first the Norwegians were very critical of
his war performance, the military commission of inquiry speaking harshly
of his failure to also fire on Kriegsmarine ships "Lützow" and "Emden",
approaching behind Blücher, and also for surrendering Oscarborg early
than necessary after the battle, but in the end escaped court-martial,
and he and Anderssen both were awarded Norway's highest honours by King
Haakon VII in December 1945.

The film's original title is "The King's 'No'" because of a pivotal
moment near the end, when German ambassador Curt Bräuer (played by
Austrian actor Karl Markovics) finally met one-to-one, at the
ambassador's insistance clearing the room of everyone else, at Elverum
with the fugitive King Haakon and pleaded privately with him to please
sign a capitulation agreement, committing Norway to lay down arms.
Haakon replied that, as the head of state of a _democratic country_, he
refused to abuse power, turned away from Bräuer, and presented the
German ultimatum to the Cabinet meeting next door, saying they must
consider it _but_ that, if they were to agree to it, he would abdicate
(in particular, the thought of Quisling in power was not acceptable), as
would his entire family.  The Cabinet, somewhat inspired by the royal
attitude, told Bräuer "no", and remained in the war.

Part of the reason Norwegians so respected the elderly Haakon was that
he wasn't even Norwegian, but rather Danish (played in the film by
veteran Danish actor Jesper Christensen), yet was profoundly loyal, when
it mattered, to the adopted country that had made him king when it
declared independence from Sweden in 1905.


[1] Nasjonal Samling had never cleared the 2.5% floor to have even one
seat in Parliament.  Former minister of defence Quisling's claim to be
the new PM because the Nygaardsvold government had fled Oslo was finally
recognised by Berlin (but nobody else) for a while in 1942, but
he gradually got sidelined and ignored by Reichskommissar Terboven, the
military governor.  Terboven suicided when the surrender came, but
Quisling seemed to think that by guiding a "peaceful transition", he
would escape trial, but went to the firing squad in October 1945, saying
as his last words "I'm convicted unfairly, and I die innocent."